


Really On Risa

by Britpacker



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Episode Related, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Multi, Shore Leave, The Disaster Twins are disastrous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-25 01:02:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21347713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: The record states that Commander Tucker and Lieutenant Reed were robbed by a pair of shapeshifters on shore leave.  The record may not be entirely accurate.  Sequel to “Testing the (Vulcan) Theory”
Relationships: Malcolm Reed/Charles "Trip" Tucker III
Comments: 3
Kudos: 44





	1. Playing The Game

**Author's Note:**

> There could possibly be some minor spoilers for ep 1.25 “Two Days and Two Nights” in here, somewhere. I’ve taken the premise and run off my own way with it…

The local tipples, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed was forced to concede, were considerably more potent than he’d anticipated. One didn’t expect a couple of daft-looking orange things with silly paper umbrellas floating on top to warm up the world so fast.

Not that he - or his associate, who was currently slurping the last dregs from his neighbour’s glass through a lipstick-stained straw – was complaining. It was a long time since he’d last felt this pleasant haziness at the edge of his vision. 

His stomach muscles felt slack. His head was heavy. And a beautiful brunette of decidedly carnivorous tendencies was making a wet, sloppy meal of his ear.

Risa definitely deserved a place on Starfleet’s list of must-see destinations.

Commander Charles “Trip” Tucker the Third caught his eye and winked, his mouth hitting a perfect _O_ that implied exactly where the delightful Latia’s fingers were resting in that precise moment. As solemnly as his mildly inebriated state would allow, Reed raised his glass.

“You must be very… adventurous to have travelled so far from home,” Dee’Ahn murmured, removing her teeth from his ear long enough to share her sweet voice with the whole table. Malcolm shrugged.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained – old Earth saying.”

“We try t’ live by it,” Trip added loudly. Dee’Ahn batted her lashes at him.

“You must very much admired, on Earth,” Latia suggested, stretching over the table to snag a last plump cherry-like fruit from her friend’s empty glass. What started out as a trademark cocky Southern grin slipped sideways into a definite leer.

Cautious, Reed extended one leg. As his sole connected with the blond’s calf, Trip jolted back in his chair and scowled.

“Some of us prefer to keep a lower profile,” the Brit drawled, lightning sparks flaring from the depths of his stormy eyes. Dee’Ahn tickled his near cheekbone, and instinctively he tilted into the touch. 

“Still you agree, you _are_ adventurers.”

“Doin’ things no human’s ever done before, ma’am,” Tucker announced with the grandiose flourish of the truly rat-arsed. It was all Reed could do not to giggle.

_Oh._ As the sound erupted from his lips, he discovered his self-control wasn’t quite as impressive as he’d thought.

Not that the ladies seemed to mind. Dee’Ahn’s lips had replaced her fingers, and Latia’s brown eyes were torn from Trip’s fair face just long enough to burn the jacket straight off Malcolm’s shoulders. “We like adventure too,” she crooned, winding perfectly manicured fingers through the short hair at the Southerner’s nape. “It’s why we vacation on Risa every summer.”

“You’ll have t’ show us some of the options.” Was that Trip’s or Latia’s foot rubbing the back of his knee? As ticklish pleasure ran up his thigh and higher, Reed decided he really didn’t care.

“We’d be delighted.” The women smirked at each other, and a second shimmer of sensation dripped down from the Englishman’s spinning head. “Are you staying here?”

“Couple ‘f blocks away.” Intrigued, Trip removed his teeth from Latia’s earlobe, blue eyes widening when her silky hair swished into his face. “You, uh, got somethin’ special in mind?”

From the American’s sudden jolt, Malcolm suspected he wasn’t the only male experiencing a certain pressure around a significant portion of the anatomy. As his eyelids drooped and his hips arched, he was forcibly reminded of just how long it had been since a woman last applied it.

Nimble fingers worked him; their delicate dance oddly emphasized through cotton. “Have you ever played a quartet, Malcolm?” Dee’Ahn cooed, laughter informing the question as he rolled with her manipulations.

A bucket of iced water couldn’t have damped rising ardour more efficiently. “I, er, _beg_ your pardon?” he squeaked, falsetto to Tucker’s rising mezzo. Latia blew him a kiss.

“You travel galaxies, yet you’ve never shared your body with more than one?” she questioned, digging a fingertip somewhere particularly tender. Cross-eyed, Trip choked out an eloquent reply.

“Guh!”

The women were laughing at them. Reed barely noticed, in his fascination with the information inadvertently revealed. “Er, Trip? You’ve never gone with a group?”

The dark gold head wagged. “’m a bit…”

“Conventional?”

“Borin’. You?”

Half a mind on Dee’Ahn’s exquisitely talented hands, Malcolm jerked his head sideways. And almost fell off his chair. “Can’t say it’s ever… come up.”

That smirk was a definite challenge. “Sayin’ you wouldn’t ‘ve took off for the next star system?” Tucker sneered.

Thin, well-shaped lips curled, and Trip was sure he saw the stunning brunette opposite him swoon. “That would rather depend on the _other participants_, Commander.”

“Ah see your point, Lew-tennant.” Bright eyes the colour of the Risan ocean gleamed at him, and for a moment Malcolm forgot the woman playing with his hair. “So - whadda you say? You up to…”

“Boldly going?” He must be plastered, Malcolm concluded. He wasn’t into… _that_ kind of thing.

His penis twitched a demurral. His head followed as if it were on a string.

Latia stretched over the table to ruffle his already finger-mussed hair. “You are a fine ambassador for your species, Malcolm Reed,” she murmured, catching the hand he raised in modest protest and sucking the longest finger deep into her mouth. From the corner of his eye, he saw Dee’Ahn performing the same service for his friend. 

Trip waggled an eyebrow. “Local custom?” he mouthed. Malcolm shrugged. They certainly seemed to have some intriguing ones.

He had no idea how he got to his feet: heard the scrape of the chair moving behind him from a vast distance. Latia seemed to stagger as she rounded the table, inadvertently knocking her neighbour into him. The pleasurable warmth in Reed’s core went up another notch.

Physical contact. Strange new sexual experiences. What more could a sailor far from home seek?

Arms linked around him from either side and, careless of who they belonged to, he flung his own out wide to tangle with them. Hips bumped his. Someone giggled.

By the time they were out of the club he’d switched positions to the outside. Latia dipped under his armpit, taking a nip at him on her way by before swishing the sting away with her tongue. “You’ll have us over at this rate,” he groused good-naturedly, swinging left to let Trip follow his friend like a pup on a tight leash. “Whoops!”

When he staggered, Dee’Ahn grabbed his hand. Where she chose to place it made him dizzy all over again. “’s not far, is it?” he demanded querulously.

“’s just here.” Tucker sounded muffled: not surprising with his face being chewed off by a lovely alien poodle named Latia, Malcolm figured, letting himself stumble over their hotel’s low step in the American’s wake. His feet seemed to have disconnected from his central nervous system, but it didn’t matter. These girls were stronger than they looked, given the way they were hauling both himself and that hulking great blond drunkard along.

He surrendered control to them, content to let Trip garble directions to their room while his hands explored two equally delectable derrieres, and a finger he thought he knew knocked their surroundings out of focus before beating a hasty retreat from his. 

Once inside their spacious apartment, what few inhibitions the ladies had clung onto were cast off faster than the ridiculous scraps of coloured cloth they’d been almost wearing. Tucker whooped his way through getting rid of his jacket; Malcolm yelped when Latia elected to remove his shirt buttons with her teeth before Dee’Ahn rubbed her bared breasts into his naked chest like a cat scent-marking her territory. Dizzy, the armour officer slipped his hands between their plastered bodies, cupping the luscious weight in his palms.

“Squeeze them,” she commanded, breathless.

At the edge of his vision he spied Trip offering the same service to his partner. Latia’s head fell back, her eyes closing in pure bliss. “Sensitive?” he heard himself wonder.

“Very.” Under his gentle massage Dee’Ahn’s nipples began to swell and leak, and non-too-tenderly she pushed his head down to lap the resultant sweetness.

While one hand manipulated her, Reed used the other to force his trousers down, briefly thanking whichever loud-mouthed reckless Yank had advised going commando for the night. His penis pulsed heavily against her belly. Her pelvis rolled in greeting. 

Under normal circumstances, Malcolm would have been embarrassed by the volume of his gratified groan.

Mandarin. That was what he was tasting, the sweet sharpness of citrus against the velvety ripeness of a woman’s flesh. He was drowning, losing all sense of time and place as he suckled her pebbled teat and those hands, long, slim and oh, so skilful, worked from his shoulders to his arse and around, playing his hardness like a virtuoso.

Something tickled his face, and as he raised his spinning head, he discovered Latia had disengaged from Trip and was insinuating herself into Dee’Ahn’s place. “You don’t mind?” she purred even as her leg hooked around his waist and the room dissolved before his goggling eyes. Close enough to hurt his ear he heard Tucker moan long and deep, evidently satisfied with the ladies’ deft substitution. “Variety is, they say, the spice of life.”

“Oh, indeed.” This was variety like he’d never known before, and Malcolm was just far gone enough to relish it. Languid, he dropped his hands to Latia’s sumptuous arse, squeezing its softness while she rode the hardness of him. _Creamy cappuccino_, he decided lazily. Possibly a few shavings of chocolate. As different from her friend as it was possible to be, yet equally delicious. 

Before he could settle into a comfortable rhythm she slithered free, and he found himself with a hairy, horny armful of the companion he’d secretly been waiting for all night. Trip’s thigh jammed between his legs; his competent, work-weathered hands cupped Reed’s flushed face. Over his shoulder Malcolm distinctly heard Dee’Ahn whimper.

If his head would only get off its merry-go-round, he assured himself, he’d have a look to see what Latia was doing to her. Then Trip’s mouth claimed his and he forgot to care.

As if a strong wind had blown across the embers of a banked fire, he flared up. All the sensations the women had stirred doubled and trebled when Tucker’s strong, confident fingers began their experienced manipulation of his hottest spots. Reed ground helplessly against his partner, unfamiliar surroundings and audience alike abandoned to the raw, pure pleasure this man alone could bring.

Tucker groaned extravagantly, breaking off the kiss to lap enthusiastically at his lover’s jaw, tonguing down the elegant line of the neck to the soft spot at the base of the throat that always made Malcolm’s knees give way. The tug of fingers in his hair was painful but he welcomed it, grounded by the stinging sensation. And in the far distance, above the roar of rushing blood in his ears, he caught the high note of an irritating squeak.

“Trip? Malcolm?”

Where Dee’Ahn failed, Latia tried louder. “Trip!”

“Mmmm…. Yeah?” Bleary blue eyes wandered in their general direction. Unpleasantly disturbed by his man’s distraction, Reed twisted to confront the intrusion. 

It took a moment for the scene before him to make sense but when it hit, Madam Clarity offered one hell of a right hook.

Two beautiful, buxom women. Stark naked, one still clinging to the other. Both glowering like Klingons denied a fight. “Umm, you called?” Trip tried helplessly.

Latia’s left hand lifted. Something slim and silver glinted between her tanned fingers. _Where in God’s name was she hiding_ that_? _

Even as the thought was chugging through his mind, the professional in Reed was assessing its meaning. “You are mated,” Dee’Ahn grated through clenched teeth. “You lied!”

“Uh, well, only a little…”

That _shucks, Ma’am_ charm, so effective on ageing Southern belles, bounced off the furious young aliens as if they were armour-plated. “Deceivers!” Latia shrieked. Her hand jerked.

To one man, time slowed. To the other, it lurched out of Impulse and straight to Warp 5.

Malcolm lunged. Trip heard himself yell, flailing wildly to stop the slighter man’s insane heroics. Something crackled.

Blue light flared. He saw it for a nanosecond, before everything turned black.


	2. One Hell Of A Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their night of hedonism and debauchery didn't quite go to plan. How will Trip and Malcolm handle the aftermath?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentences in italics, I should probably have said before, equal a character's thoughts.

His head.

There was a shuttlepod parked on it.

In fact, Trip Tucker decided as greater clarity brought with it greater pain, the pod was still in its launchbay and the whole damn starship had come down on top of him. He swallowed hard. Felt the bubbling of a whimper run up his throat.

Then winced when it hit the tip of his tongue. “Man, those drinks were somethin’ else!”

That was weird. Starships didn’t wriggle.

Or groan as they slithered off an aching chest, landing with a soft thump on the cold wooden floor. Or speak with English accents, especially blessedly familiar, ever-so-slightly slurry ones.

“Think you’d be better blaming the disruptor blast, myself.”

Disruptor blast._ Oh, yeah._ He remembered that.

Turquoise fire engulfing his lover as Malcolm threw himself, foolhardy protective to the last, across Tucker’s body. The angry caws of two outraged women cheated of a night’s erotic adventure. “Hell, no wonder I’m sore!”

“S’pose we’re lucky they used a stun setting,” Reed cradled his head, eyes squeezed shut against the wave of nausea that rolled when he tried moving. “And I _really_ don’t want to know where she was hiding that thing!”

Laughing, Trip discovered, was a bigger mistake than sitting upright. Metal bands tightened around his torso and he collapsed backward with a strangled groan. “Damn. I was plannin’ on passing out a better way than that,” he grumbled.

Lieutenant Reed’s physical courage was unquestioned, but his superior officer had never been in greater awe, watching from his prone position while the slender Englishman struggled to the nearest chair and clambered in, his dark head lolling against the cushioned backrest. “Maybe we should’ve stayed on Enterprise,” he wheezed, one hand splaying over the blistered red patch marring the lily perfection of his sculpted torso. 

“Or here.”

“That’d have worked.” Through slitted eyes Reed watched his partner of three months inch on his belly toward the soft circular bed that dominated the large room, inadvertently holding his breath as the Southerner tried to slither aboard like a snake up a tall tree. The roaring pain behind his ribcage was no match for the sudden surge of primal lust that bubbled up in his tender balls when Trip groaned, burrowing his buttocks down into the bedding, arms extended onto the pillows behind his head. “Did you pack Phlox’s miracle cure?”

“Figure it’ll work on disruptor headaches?” One blue eye popped open, wandering for a moment before coming to rest on the Englishman’s crotch. “Y’ know Malcolm, you’re givin’ me a better idea…”

“Love, I’m wiped. That blast…”

“My head’s stopped spinning now it’s down here. Wanna try joinin’ me?”

Malcolm cocked his. Instantly he regretted it, every individual strand of hair piercing his palms like razor blades when he tried instinctively to press the pounding through his temples away. “Not sure I can make it without throwing up,” he grated.

“I’ll catch y’.” Coaxing. As if he hadn’t known that honey drawl was made for a moment like this! 

Biting down hard on the groan that fought up from his belly, Malcolm heaved himself to an almost-vertical position.

The room swam alarmingly as he wobbled in the correct general direction, locking his jellied knees as best as the recalcitrant joints would allow until he could freefall into the outstretched arms of his best friend. “Ugh!”

“That’s not the reaction Ah usually git.” Amused – well, he’d probably taken a less intense blast after Malcolm’s heroic intervention – Trip wrapped all four limbs around the panting brunet and waited for his breathing to steady. Cautious, aware of the lingering hyper-sensitivity in his fingertips, he stroked a wayward curl from Malcolm’s brow, smile widening when the lieutenant whimpered, arching into the touch. 

The small movement created ripples down his entire length. Hyper-sensitivity suddenly didn’t seem so bad.

“Malcolm? You okay t’ do that again?”

“I’m willing to – oh! – try.”

Slowly Trip moved his hands down: from silken hair to satin skin, past unexpectedly broad shoulders and over carved biceps and triceps that tightened under the lightest touch. He didn’t stop until his fingers were laced through the other man’s, perspiration gluing their palms. Then he tried shifting his hips. 

“Trip!”

“’s my name, lover.” His eyelids fluttering, Tucker tried the move again, needing to reaffirm that those gratifying tingles ran all the way up to his ringing skull. “Maybe you could try movin’ a bit too? That sure as hell helped my headache!”

“Oh, yes!” Every tiny tremor through the burlier body was transferred into his own, and when Malcolm risked responding the full-length friction blotted residual aches and pains straight out of his mind. This was why he’d come to Risa in the first place, he reminded himself groggily. Hedonism and debauchery.

It hadn’t worked out well so far, but things were looking up. 

_In more ways than one._

Tentative, he adjusted position, gripping Trip’s hands for focus when the room tilted on its axis: not from pain this time he decided, briefly cross-eyed at the velvety caress of something hot and heavy against his most sensitive portions. “Isn’t this supposed – oh yes, just there! – to be good for – uuuhhh! – headaches?” he grunted, the moans coming unbidden every time his man’s engorged phallus pulsed directly against his own. Tucker gasped.

“Endorphins – or somethin’,” he growled, bucking up hard into the smaller man. Sensation oozed through every contact point: and there were, Malcolm realised hazily, ever so many of them.

He felt the movement of the air against his arms as they were lifted, Trip carrying their joined hands back to the pillow behind his head. Languid, lazy, they rocked together while the air grew hot and their bodies slicked with sweat and the first musky leakage of precum. 

Part of him ached to free a hand and spread that lovely liquid all down his length. The rest of Reed discovered it couldn’t be arsed with the effort.

“Oh, Malcolm. Yeah darlin’, like that.” Nauseous discomfort forgotten Trip gripped his boyfriend’s hands tighter, lost to everything but the soothing warmth unfurling from his midsection. Reed’s body, lightly furred with chocolate hairs, fit perfectly against the planes and angles of his own, each tiny move it made pushing Trip higher, closer to pure bliss. It was right there, broiling in his tight balls and sizzling along his entire nervous system. _ Just a little more pressure… just a little more, Malcolm, please…_

He didn’t think he said it aloud but the Brit reacted as if he did, blindly seeking the welcoming cavern of Tucker’s mouth and sinking his swollen tongue into its depths, muffling the Southerner’s shameless groan and adding the stimulus of its vibration on his tongue to the multitude already overloading his senses. 

It didn’t have to be fast; it could hardly have been gentler. Yet as the precipice loomed before him and the last threads of his self-control frayed to naught, Malcolm Reed was caught up by the towering wave of a truly monumental climax.


	3. Risa 2, Starfleet 0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rollercoaster hasn’t stopped yet. Just when their break seemed to be improving, Malcolm makes a shocking discovery.

When sweet oblivion relented, Reed discovered two things. First: they’d forgotten to close the curtains before leaving their suite last night and the midday sun was streaming across the bed.

Second: his headache had disappeared.

Unbidden his lips twitched into a wry half-smile. “Endorphins,” he murmured.

“Or somethin’.”

Trip, he gathered, was on the mend too. Languidly he rolled until they were nose-to-nose on the pillow, soft smiles gracing both faces. “Phlox is sacked,” Malcolm announced solemnly. Trip dipped in to peck the end of his nose.

“Ah don’t provide those services for just anybody, Lew-tenant.”

“As the ladies of Risa now know.” The temptation to linger – just to lie back and savour the sensation of that hard, hairy body so close to his - was overwhelming. Malcolm was on the brink of succumbing when a loud rumbling sound erupted from his belly. “Sorry!”

“It must be lunchtime.” Perfectly unoffended Tucker turned onto his hip, squinting into the glaring sunlight. “And I don’t remember us eatin’ last night…”

“I’ll run down and grab us something, shall I?”

“’kay. ’m just gonna rest my eyes for a bit.”

“Go back to sleep, you mean.” Chuckling, the Englishman kicked his way free of the covers someone – he strongly suspected someone blond – had managed to drag around them as they slept. 

While his partner puttered Trip let his eyes drift shut, quietly revelling in the simple domesticity of hearing the man he loved – he didn’t doubt that anymore – contentedly going about his routine ablutions. The sunlight felt good on his face; Malcolm’s surprisingly tuneful humming tickled his ear; and there was the promise of food on the horizon. Life was good.

And, he discovered a moment later, it had a habit of kicking a man hard in the balls right when he least expected it. 

“I don’t _believe_ this! They’ve stolen our bloody clothes!”

A couple of octaves higher than usual, almost shrill, Malcolm’s voice shattered his happy daze and brought Tucker bolt upright before he’d even realised he was moving. Reed stood before the open doors of the double closet directly opposite the windows, his arms still outstretched and gripping its handles. The interior stood as bare as the man himself, the lightweight trousers and casual shirts the Brit had hung there so carefully as soon as they arrived all gone.

He tried looking around the floor for garments abandoned in licentious abandon last night. In desperation he even stretched out an arm and yanked open the bedside chest where Malcolm had neatly folded their smalls. 

Nothing. “Man, they must’ve been really mad at us!”

A human eyebrow shouldn’t out-climb the average Vulcan’s, but it figured nobody had bothered telling Malcolm that. “I rather got that impression when I saw a gun pointing at your head,” the Brit drawled, letting himself slump at the foot of the bed. “Bugger! This is going to be embarrassing.”

“Later, maybe.” Knowing Jonathan Archer it was later, definitely, but Trip didn’t want to think about that yet. “Guess I’d better call us up some of that room service they advertise, if you’re still hungry.”

Practicality had a calming effect on the tactical officer and Malcolm gave a crisp nod. “S’pose this means we’re stuck in here ‘til tomorrow morning, doesn’t it?” he observed, long lashes dipping just too late to conceal the wicked glint in his steely eyes. Trip pursed his mouth.

“Looks that way. Wanna guess which of those door signs means _Do Not Disturb_?”

“The way my luck’s running I’d probably pick the _Vacant – Please Clean_ sign.” 

Vivid blue eyes raked his nude form, hot enough to burn off half a dozen layers of skin. “Oh, I don’t know,” Trip breathed, pushing aside the covers to show himself in all his brawny, golden glory. “From where I am right now, things are really lookin’ up.”

“Find us rations for the next twelve hours and I’ll be inclined to agree.” Smiling, the brunet heaved himself to his feet and headed off toward the bathroom, trusting his friend to handle the complexities of the Risan menu cards. Even over the splash of the shower he could hear the impatience vibrating through every elongated syllable as the man tried to get some Earth-type sense out of the local staff.

“Well, I’m not sure what we’re gettin’, but they’re sendin’ double portions,” Trip hollered a few minutes later. Flashing his reflection a grin, Malcolm stepped out of the glass cubicle and grabbed the smaller of two fluffy white bathrobes from the back of the door.

“Each?” he called, stopped short at a flash of bright blue scrunched in a corner. “Er, Trip? I think our blushes are slightly spared.”

“Like I said – things are lookin’ up.” Ambling into the bright space, Tucker followed the line of his lover’s gaze and whooped, whacking himself hard around the head. “Sonofabitch! They missed ‘em.”

Two pairs of standard Starfleet boxers, one tank and a tee squelched unpleasantly as he plucked them from a still-sticky patch of tiled floor – the last reminder of an entertaining splashy hour spent playing with the various pummelling settings within a sunken whirlpool bath before heading out last evening. “The floor’s dried - mostly,” the American observed, wrinkling his nose when his companion seized the sodden cotton to wring vigorously over the tub. “We should’ve stayed where we were.”

Malcolm snickered. “Sod that for a game of soldiers. I was already wrinkled as an old prune by the time you pulled me out!”

“Mom said I liked my prunes, even as a baby. Hey! Where ‘re you goin’ with those things?”

“They’ll dry quicker on the balcony.” Breezing back into the main room, Malcolm was astonished at the weight which had rolled off his shoulders at proof that his wedding tackle wasn’t about to be displayed to an entire alien civilisation. “Ah, so _that’s_ how they did it!”

“Who did what?” It wasn’t his fault, Trip promised himself when an exasperated harrumph convulsed the smaller man’s whole frame. Dark against the brilliance of the day, every millimetre outlined by its radiance, the magnificent body he knew so well appeared more perfect, more tempting, than ever.

“Dee’Ahn and Latia.” When he turned around the view got even better, and Tucker’s mouth parched to Vulcan desert levels. “There’s a shred of your God-awful shirt caught in the railings. They’ve obviously just heaved our stuff out the window and bolted.”

“Hot damn!” Trip figured they should be grateful the girls hadn’t heaved their unconscious asses out the same way, but when someone rapped firmly on the apartment door he decided not to dwell on it, leaping back under the covers before Malcolm could make a move. “Get that, willya?”

“Why me?” Reed protested, outraged. Trip waggled his eyebrows.

“’cause you’ve got the robe?” he suggested. Laughing, Malcolm obliged.

Ten seconds later, he was wishing he hadn’t.

The porter with their laden trolley (how much had the fool ordered, enough to feed the whole armoury team?) took one look at Reed’s tumbled hair, and the handsome blond wrapped in the bedding behind, and smirked. Massively.

Malcolm wasn’t sure which individual was more aggravating. “The blue door sign means _room in use_, if you’d prefer not to be disturbed, gentlemen,” she announced, leaving the innuendo to hang as she turned and fled. A noisy Southern guffaw chased her down the hallway.

“Ah think she’s onto us, lover!”

“What, she realises we’ve been robbed by a couple of insanely jealous females?” Suddenly, the assumption he’d been rogering Trip Tucker up the wall for the last fifteen hours straight didn’t seem nearly so humiliating. 

As he watched the handsome engineer unwrap himself from his protective chrysalis and amble toward their food supplies, Malcolm found himself profoundly wishing he’d done exactly that.

Aware of the greedy gaze devouring his backside, Tucker turned and threw out a cocky smile that wavered when he saw the extent of his effect on his boyfriend. “We can wait f’r dinner if there’s somethin’ you’d like better, Lieutenant,” he purred, all honey and smoke.

His ass hit the mattress before he could register movement. And it was dusk before either man noticed an empty belly again.


	4. For The Record

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm Reed, conspiring to deceive a superior officer? Trip didn't see that one coming...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short epilogue to explain how the official record came to be so wrong (in my head, at least!)

“Y’ know, we’re gonna hafta tell the cap’n.”

Tugging the edges of his borrowed robe closer across his chest, Malcolm still managed a pretty convincing version of his narrow-eyed, purse-lipped disapproving stare. “Are we now?” 

Trip stopped dead. Cocked his head and contemplated the enormity of what he thought he’d just heard. “You’re not suggestin’ we lie to our commanding officer, Lieutenant?”

Reed thrust a hand through his wind-ruffled hair. “Frankly I’m not sure _what_ I’m suggesting,” he admitted gloomily. “But gaily announcing “sorry sir, we rather annoyed a couple of gorgeous women by being more interesting in shagging each other than them” doesn’t _actually_ hold much appeal…”

“No kiddin’.” Only they, Tucker figured, could have gotten themselves into this mess. “So – what do you suggest? Tell everybody we got robbed and left tied up in a basement?”

Well-marked brows mountaineered up a broad British brow. “That might work,” Reed murmured, silvery eyes taking on the wide, starry look that always played hell with his lover’s hormones. “It’d be just our luck to run into criminals on a supposedly safe planet…”

“Latia _was_ carrying a weapon.”

Malcolm grinned wickedly and the Southerner’s internal pressure gauge went up another ten degrees. “And I’m still trying to work out where she was hiding it!”

“Darlin’ I don’t wanna go there. So – we got robbed by a couple of… shall we say shapeshifters? That sounds sexier: and if the cap’n decides he’s gotta be a good citizen and report the crime…”

“Bollocks.” The Englishman folded his arms and glared into the bucolic countryside, oblivious to the boom of their shuttlepod coming through the planet’s atmosphere. “Of course, he’ll have to do that, won’t he?”

“Shapeshifters,” Trip repeated firmly. “And – hell, we were careless.”

“Who, us?” Quicksilver, Malcolm rediscovered his sense of humour, his bark of laughter rolling over the ripening crop fields. “Now if we were to drench ourselves in this very expensive plonk – I know it’s a waste, but just hear me out! – it might persuade them we really _did_ get tied up in a bar’s basement and had to break a rather heavy bottle to cut ourselves loose. 

“And the next time we win the shore leave lottery, can’t we just lock ourselves in your quarters for the duration instead?”

Mournfully uncorking the bottle he’d hoped to save for a special occasion, Trip dribbled half its contents down his chest and rubbed vigorously before handing the remainder to his partner. “Now why didn’t you suggest that last week?”

“Because nobody knows about us?” And if there was one thing Malcolm Reed had learned in the past forty-eight hours, it was that privacy had its disadvantages.

_All right, two things. I don’t share my toys!_

Trip shuffled his feet, adopting his wide-eyed bemused redneck pose. “Y’ know, Mal, I’m thinkin’ it’s time we did something about that,” he wheedled.

“Yes dear. So am I.” Pausing just long enough for the words seep through a notoriously iron-clad skull Reed hastened to clarify (and confuse) his position. “Not just yet, obviously. Not until they’ve all stopped laughing at us for…”

“Getting robbed on a paradise planet.”

Matching smiles, at once intimate and sly, rolled over two handsome faces. “Exactly that,” Malcolm agreed solemnly before pushing onto his toes for a brief, chaste kiss. “All right. I think I can face them now.”

With a last useless tug at the base of his robe in the vain hope of salvaging a touch of dignity in the next ten minutes, Trip Tucker gave a brisk nod and set off down the meandering track toward their landing ground. Someday soon, everybody was going to know.

Know he had the heart – and the body – of the smartest, sexiest sonofagun in the known universe. Being Malcolm Reed’s man – even when that universe was conspiring to make fools of the both of them – was definitely something he wanted to shout about.


End file.
